The Naked Truth/Jamala Rogers
Why Defunding the Police Sounds Scary
What if there was a company that boasted that their product would get you extraordinary results? The reason the product is so expensive is because of the specialized process and the quality of ingredients used. This is why the company can supposedly guarantee such results. The marketing campaign has everyone buying the product. But the results are less than perfect and for some, the product does not even work. That’s how I feel about the military-industrial complex and its cousin, the police department.
For both U.S. military and police budgets, we don’t get the biggest bang for our bucks; we do get lots of bangs. The public has been sold on the idea that in order to be safe in our homes and in our country, we must have the biggest military in the world. And we do.
The U.S. military budget is sprinting its way towards $1 trillion and not even breaking a sweat. This country spends more on its military spending than China, India, United Kingdom, Russia, France, Germany, Saudi Arabia, Japan North Korea and Italy combined. This is a good time to remind you that the U.S. and Russia control 90 percent of the nuclear arsenal in the world — a little over 13,000 nukes.
The American public has totally bought into the Pentagon’s narrative that there’s a boogey man at every corner waiting to steal our democracy. We are so paralyzed by fear that we can’t comprehend the notion we could defund the military. Or reduce it. Or re-allocate funds. Or whatever term is compatible with your ability to reason.
The waste of taxpayer dollars and other contradictions are so great that the defense department can’t even pass an audit. I think we could find many ways to use the $100 billion that, by the Pentagon’s own admission, is administrative waste. The amount of waste and fraud should be criminal but who are you gonna call — the ghost busters?
Pretending to be concerned about national security is now a past time that allows many self-serving people to be gluttons at the public trough of military spending. They do so with minimal concern that there will be a public outcry at the failed weapons systems, defective planes and other botched military toys. Between the powerful lobbyists and their buddy contractors, they are high fiving one another on their sweetheart deals right in our gullible faces.
As for their cousins on the local level, the police departments use the same fear tactic, often conflating crime with public safety. In the words of one council person, “we should spare no expense for public safety!”
There are lobbyists on the local and state level who are constantly crying for more money for police departments. They do this whether the crime stats are down or whether human needs are up — like money needed for affordable housing or mental health care.
We are spending a ton of money to make us feel safe, yet the state of true peacefulness continues to allude us. Taxpayers must demand accountability from those entrusted with our hard-earned dollars and when that happens, we will organically uncover the roots causes of fear, of crime, of war.
This is when we can have a serious, objective discussion about defunding the military-industrial complex and its subsidiaries. Or reducing their budgets. Or re-allocating funds to meet the human needs of communities. Or whatever we prefer to call choosing life over death, and peace over fear.
